1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the use of thermal oxidation or a combination of thermal and plasma oxidation to convert carbon-containing polysilane to silicon oxide to avoid the need to strip polysilane and to allow introduction of an additional oxide layer as a mask layer for substrate etching, when manufacturing semiconductor products or devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, removal of a photoresist is accomplished by a chemical process that is a wet process, or one using an xe2x80x9cafter glowxe2x80x9d of plasma, ozone, and the like. For instance, the wet process may be completed by using a solution of an acid, an alkali, or an organic solvent.
However, it is well known that a photoresist cannot be completely removed by a chemical process. In the case of an ion implantation process, the resist develops in a manner so as to be carbonized to a significant extent. Further, the surface of the resist is damaged in the etching process if fluorine gas or fluoride is used. As a result, the carbonized or damaged portion formed during the ion implantation or fluorine etching processes is not completely removed, and remains after the resist removal process is completed.
Due to the encumbrances of the chemical removal methods, a dry resist removal process or ashing method has been utilized in which a plasma removal method using gas having a high oxygen content is employed. In the plasma removal method, gas is brought to a plasma state by applying a high frequency electric field to generate a multiplicity of charged particles such as radicals, electrons and ions, and removing the resist by utilizing a chemical reaction between the generated charged particles and the constituent atoms or molecules of the resist.
Nevertheless, the plasma stripping process is also characterized by short comings in that: the total stripping time is longer; the longer stripping time limits the production rate and increases the cost of production per wafer; and the high temperatures involved in the process can cause the photoresist to bubble. Bubbling is caused by either solvent trapped in the photoresist layer during the step of xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d in which the photoresist boils, thereby creating a gaseous high-pressure pocket in the photoresist that breaks the photoresist to permit the gas to form in different parts of the wafer and thereby damage or contaminate other parts of the wafer, or by implanted metal species that form volatile species which are trapped below the hardened crust during photoresist stripping.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,773,201 disclose a down stream ashing method for removing organic resist film from a semiconductor wafer in which water vapor is added to an oxygen gas as a reaction gas. The amount of added water vapor is more than 1% of the total reaction gas with respect to the flow rate. The process entails:
placing a semiconductor wafer having an organic resist film thereon in a reaction chamber;
creating a gas plasma containing both electrically neutral species and charged particles by subjecting a gas containing oxygen to electromagnetic power;
ashing the organic resist film on the semiconductor wafer by exposing the wafer with the film thereon to the neutral species while shielding the wafer from the charged particles; and
reducing an activation energy of the ashing reaction between the organic resist film and the neutral species, thereby reducing the temperature necessary to drive the ashing reaction at a predetermined given rate, by causing the gas containing oxygen to also contain a water vapor.
A process for removing hardened or implanted photoresist from a silicon wafer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,824,604. The process comprises:
a. placing a silicon wafer having hardened or implanted photoresist and oxide thereon into a wafer processing chamber of a plasma-generating reactor;
b. forming reactive species by generating a plasma of a gas comprising oxygen, a halogen-containing compound, and a hydrocarbon under conditions capable of causing undesired etching of the oxide in the absence of the hydrocarbon, wherein the reactive species include ions formed from the hydrocarbon;
c. exposing the surface of the silicon wafer to reactive species from the plasma, including at least some of the ions formed from the hydrocarbon; and
d. maintaining the flow of the hydrocarbon such that the selectivity of etching of the photoresist relative to the oxide is substantially increased over the selectivity that would exist in the absence of the hydrocarbon.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,427 disclose a method for removing a resist of a semiconductor device comprising:
removing the resist on a layer formed on a semiconductor substrate having a functional region, any direction of the thickness thereof by a predetermined thickness by applying plasma processing; and
removing the remaining resist by applying a chemical process.
A low temperature dry process for stripping photoresist after high dose ion implantation is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,811,358. The process comprises:
providing semiconductor device structures on a semiconductor substrate;
forming a photoresist layer as ion-implantation mask on the semiconductor substrate;
performing high dose ion implantation into the semiconductor substrate while hardening a surface of the photoresist mask to form a mask with a hardened surface and a subsurface;
first plasma-etching the implant-hardened surface of the photoresist layer, wherein the first plasma-etching includes oxygen and nitrogen/hydrogen plasmas;
second plasma-etching the subsurface of the photoresist layer, wherein the second plasma-etching includes oxygen and nitrogen/hydrogen plasmas and takes place at a higher temperature than the first plasma-etching;
third plasma-etching any residual oxide on the photoresist layer, wherein the third plasma-etching includes nitrogen/hydrogen plasmas; and
cleaning said semiconductor substrate.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,703 disclose a method of manufacturing a semiconductor in which photoresist on a silicon oxide layer on a semiconductor substrate is stripped using an oxygen plasma afterglow and a biased substrate. The process entails:
(a) connecting a first electrode to another surface of the semiconductor substrate, the first electrode being connected to a positive terminal of an electrical source,
(b) arranging a second electrode in the processing chamber at a distance from the photoresist, the second electrode being connected to a negative terminal of the electrical source,
(c) applying at least a direct current electrical voltage between the first and second electrodes,
(d) stripping the photoresist from the layer of silicon oxide by placing the photoresist in an afterglow of an oxygen plasma, and
(e) maintaining an electric field of said electrical voltage between the layer of silicon oxide and the plasma with the first and second electrodes in order to reduce contamination of the layer of silicon oxide by decelerating ions of the plasma.
In the manufacture of semiconductor devices, both organic and inorganic bottom anti-reflective coatings (ARCs) are extensively used to suppress variation of critical dimension (CD). Also, because of etch considerations associated with aggressively shrinking resist thickness and poor etch resistance at 193 nm resists, the industry has begun using anti-reflective coatings for both CD control and as an etch hard mask. Accordingly, there is a need in the art of manufacturing semiconductor devices to employ or find a material which can function as a good ARC material; exhibit strong absorption characteristics at 193 nm and 248 nm wavelengths; be characterized by a high etch selectivity to resist oxide and nitride; and perform as an acceptable hard mask for substrate etching.
One object of the present invention is to provide a method for removing polysilane without stripping during manufacturing of a semiconductor device without incurring the disadvantages of existing wet agents.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for removing polysilane without stripping during manufacture of a semiconductor device, in which polysilane is used as an antireflective coating (ARC) material, without incurring the disadvantages of existing wet agents.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an additional mask layer for substrate etching during the manufacturing of a semiconductor device by converting polysilane to silica.